Top 25 PC Retailers
2009 Sales Rise 5%

The ongoing recession in 2009 did little to dampen PC and
related product sales, according to TWICE’s Top 25 PC
Retailers Report.

The report, compiled by The Stevenson
Company, tagged sales for the
year at $47.138 billion, up 4.9 percent
from 2008.

Best Buy once again led the way, easily
outpacing second-place Apple with
$14.5 billion in sales, a
16.1 percent increase.
Best Buy certainly benefitted from Circuit City’s
departure from the retail
landscape, along with
healthy sales of portable
computer products that
started in the latter half
of 2009.

Apple’s second-place
showing is a new company
high, and it supplanted
Dell, which fell to fourth
on the list. Apple’s jump
took place despite a 3.5 percent sales
falloff . The company’s retail sales totaled
$5.7 billion for 2009, down from
the $5.9 billion made in 2008. The
2008 figure is dramatically different
from what was noted on TWICE’s
Top 25 PC Retailers Report last year.
According to The Stevenson Company,
Apple restated its earnings after altering
the way it tracks its own retail
sales, so Stevenson altered the 2008
figure accordingly.

Apple’s ascension also can be attributed
to its ability to keep its sales almost
level with the prior year, while Dell experienced
another double-digit drop,
shoving it below third-place Walmart.

Walmart managed to nudge sales up
just a bit, 1.6 percent, to $5.6 billion.
Fourth-place Dell saw sales fall 18.2
percent, a performance almost as bad
at the 19 percent loss posted in 2008.
Dell was the only PC vendor to not
post double-digit unit
shipment increases in
the last quarter of 2009,
according to IDC and
Gartner.

Newegg.com grabbed
Circuit’s old No. 5 position
on the list, as it managed
to push out a slight
1.8 percent increase on
sales of $1.7 billion for
the year.

Target and Amazonalso climbed several positions
on the list.

Target jumped from ninth to sixth
on very healthy sales increase of 12.2
percent to $1.4 billion. The bulk of
this increase was attributed to increased
netbook sales and peripheral
sales, primarily external hard drives.

Amazon experienced the greatest
growth of any retailer on the Top 25,
44.6 percent on $1.4 billion in sales.
This moved the online retailing giant to
seventh from 10th place. Part of the increase
is due to the very strong Kindle
and netbook sales the company reported
last year.

Office Depot slipped one slot to
eighth in 2009, even though sales were up 3.8 percent to $1.3 billion.

No. 9 Systemax jumped the largest
number of spots, four, last year, to
just nudge out Staples. The company
picked up the Circuit City brand, which
it is using as an online store, and busily
continued opening new CompUSA locations
in 2009. The company’s operations
gave it $1.3 billion in sales, a 16.5
percent increase.

No. 10 Staples had a strong year,
with a 10.7 percent increase in sales for
a total of $1.3 billion. The company was
helped along by strong computer, ink
and toner sales for the year.

Regional retailer Micro Centermaintained its status quo, remaining
in 11th place on sales of $1.1 billion,
up a very strong 18.9 percent.

No. 12 Costco also enjoyed a very
good year, with sales rising 24.6 percent
to $973 million. This boosted the
warehouse club’s position up two places
from 2008.

PC Mall made its list debut at No. 18
this year with $449 million in sales,
beating out No. 19 Sony Style by $100
million. Sony’s sales of $349 million
were up 5.9 percent compared with
the prior year and enough to move the
chain up one spot.

B&H Photo, the one-store and online
retailer, also slid up a spot this year,
grabbing No. 20 on the list. B&H had
$303 million in sales, a 10.1 percent
increase.

The Army-Air Force Exchange, No.
21, experienced a flat year, with sales
inching up just 0.8 percent to $262
million.

2009 was not a good year for Ritz
Camera, as the chain filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy protection in February,
closed 800 Ritz Camera and 130 Boater’s
World stores in March, and put itself
on the block in July. The TWICE
Top 25 has the chain’s sales falling 56.8
percent to $238 million. In 2008 it had
occupied 19th place on the list.

J&R Computer & Music World, New
York’s block-long CE superstore, enjoyed
a 13 percent sales increase to
$232 million, good for No. 23 on the
list. This is two places better than
where the company landed in 2008.

TV shopping stalwart QVC held its
position at No. 24 with $231 million
in sales, a 6.8 percent jump.

And taking the prized last spot on
the report is Sears. The mass merchant
again suffered double-digit losses,
with sales falling 17.9 percent to
$183 million.

Methodology

NEW YORK — The TWICE Top 25 PC
Retailers Report ranks the leading domestic
computer technology dealers
by sales revenue of the following products:
notebook and desktop PCs and
monitors; hardware such as hard drives,
keyboards, PC cards and mice; external
drives; printers; digital cameras; and
software and peripheral accessories.

Retail sales figures are based on information
supplied by retailers responding
to a 300-dealer survey by TWICE and research
partner The Stevenson Company.
Absent their input, estimates were developed
from Stevenson’s internal markettracking
surveys (TraQline) and industry
sizing based on wholesale shipment
figures from the Consumer Electronics
Association (CEA), average retail price
points by products, and other sources.

All estimates were further refined with
public filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), TWICE
industry analyses, financial analysts’
reports, published data and other sources.
Sales figures for 2009 were then compared
with 2008 sales tallies and adjusted
if necessary to more closely track
industrywide revenue growth.

Sales are considered to be revenue received
for merchandise only sold solely
through the retail channel.

Stevenson, based in Louisville, Ky., began
as the global economic analysis and
research department of GE Appliances.
Now independent, the market research
firm has served the majap and CE industries
for more than a decade. Its TraQline
syndicated quarterly survey of 150,000
shoppers measures retail purchases of
consumer durables, and provides estimates
of unit and dollar market share and
other key data points.